August 1, 2018

gumbyversary

Lille still has her fantasies, zoned out in traffic on the way to and from work, using reality as a diving platform .....

Kate: "Hang on, I didn't say you could leave the stage yet!"

Me: "Yes, ma'am!"

Kate: "We got some requests during intermission."

Me: "We? You got a mouse in your pocket?" *audience laughs*

Kate: "Here, do you know this one?" *begins playing yet another song*

Obviously, Therapist Gumby and I still have a lot to work through together. Lille's fantasy life is juvenile to the point of chagrin.

He pointed out yesterday that it's been exactly a year since we began working together. It was a time for reflection, for assessment and measuring and considering where we've been, where we're going from here.

Both of us wish we felt that we'd accomplished more. I think that's just something we both have in our natures.

He said that [news flash] I'm extremely complicated and that this is part of the reason for the meticulous, painstaking pace of our work. We both knew what we were getting into from the beginning. I think I recall having him sign a lot of important forms in triplicate acknowledging that he understood the face-palm, pull-your-hair-out challenge he was accepting in allowing me to sit on that brown sofa and open my mouth.

This isn't to say that we haven't covered a fair distance in a year. There's quite a bit of progress there to see. For one thing, he's taken me through EMDR several times now without causing me to break out in hives. That is huge. I was terrified of EMDR a year ago. And there's everything that using that tool has accomplished, the diminished power of some traumatic memories that were costing me sleep, stability, peace.

Therapist Gumby has twice seen me at rock-bottom during a severe mood swing, before the recent era of lithium. He's stood there on the rocky floor right beside me both times, without flinching, without squirming or checking his watch and suddenly remembering a pressing engagement elsewhere. He has been there when I wanted to knock myself to the floor and spend my rage abusing myself. He has been there when I could find no other reason to keep living than personal utility, when I had a space of time to myself at home and suddenly perceived it as an opportunity for intervention-proof suicide instead of a few hours of quiet solitude.

It's one of my personal Great Mysteries, how he can be both Gumby-flexible and steel-beam strong. The nucleus to my frenzied electron pathways.

I'm incredibly lucky that he picked up the pen and signed those forms.